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Basle, 24th August 1903 — 1st Elul 5663.

Zangwill's Speech in the Great Assembly Hall.

(Farewell meeting for the delegates to the Zionist Congress of the year 1903, held on the night of the 15th of August of this year in the Great Assembly Hall.)

It fills us delegates with especial satisfaction that, at a time when "nobody" remains in London, you have streamed hither in your thousands to send us off with your best wishes on our journey to Basle, where we shall have the honour of taking part in the deliberations of the most momentous assembly since the destruction of Jerusalem. But the proceedings of this parliament do not represent the hundredth part of the work accomplished by the leaders of Zionism since the last Congress, a work carried on in all quietness, which was of necessity experimental and therefore frequently without result. I am particularly glad that my friend L. J. Greenberg presides over this meeting, a man who assuredly yields to no one in Israel in devotion to our holy cause. Our movement is made very much harder by the fact that the heaviest work rests on the shoulders of poor professional men. The politics of a State which does not yet exist fill a whole life far more than those of one already in being, and since a people can never manage its affairs without a paid political office, I say without hesitation that we ought to pay for the services of our great leader, Dr. Herzl. It will not do that the mental and bodily energy of our leader should be consumed by journalism, or that he should be chained to Vienna while his presence is required somewhere else. I do not see how his health can withstand the strain of this twofold calling, which has now weighed upon him for eight or nine years. I make this proposal here because I should not dare to make it at the Congress in the presence of Dr. Herzl himself. But of Mr. Greenberg I have no fear, and I therefore venture to maintain that men like him should be paid as well. Since the Duke of Devonshire and Mr. Chamberlain, by quite established right, draw a salary for their political activity, there is truly no reasonable ground why we too should not advance our cause with the whole time and labour of our most useful men. I have no doubt, moreover, that the cost of the journey to Basle deprives us of some very judicious delegates. But of course, for this we need money. Indeed! Money alone gives us the hope that we may obtain our own land, or at any rate create it for ourselves little by little. To win a territory by force is in our case quite out of the question, since forces must be organised upon a soil before one begins the struggle. However much I rejoice to hear of military Zionism, I must on the other hand say that a Zionist corps, such as was recently founded in New York, can be of use only when we already possess our land, although it may render valuable service in outbreaks of Jew-hatred. No, it is not the fight, but the golden sinews of the fight that we need. But whence is the money to come? From the Jewish millionaires and the other rich Jews who are to be found in every capital of the civilised world, who by their existence contribute considerably more than the poor to the nourishing of that envious Antisemitism from which we all suffer and which is one of the great compelling causes of our movement. It is foolish of the non-Zionists — few have remained anti-Zionists; they are all non-Zionists now — it is foolish, I say, of the non-Zionists to stand aside and watch us as we drag the cart uphill. We have never claimed that we ourselves possessed strength enough to pull out of the mire the burden heaped up through the centuries. The cart will never reach the top of the hill until all Israel sets its hand to it. Those who stand benevolently aside are like the cowards who will not fight and the idlers who will not pay their taxes. But although the support of the rich is wanting to us, our funds are nevertheless gradually growing, and that — how touching! — through the contributions of the poor. Yesterday